Ex-Flying Dog chief brings brew skills to Houston

Houston’s newest brewer comes to town with an impressive track record and “a lot of expectations on us to do some exciting things.”

Eric Warner was at Flying Dog in Colorado for a decade, as brewmaster and then as CEO. While there, the brewery came out with such beers as Snake Dog IPA, Double Dog double pale ale, Gonzo Imperial Porter and Dogtoberfest Märzen. By the time Flying Dog moved production to Maryland and Warner left the company in 2008, Flying Dog’s annual production had grown to 50,000 barrels, up from 10,000 when he started.

Brett Coomer / Houston Chronicle

Eric Warner, formerly of Flying Dog, works on a test batch of Weisse Versa wheat beer that will be made at his new brewery in Houston, Karbach Brewing Co., shown here under renovation.

Now the 46-year-old is bringing his talent, quarter-century’s brewing experience and interest in startups to Houston. Karbach Brewing Co. has brewing equipment on site, in a warehouse under renovation in the same U.S. 290/Loop 610 West part of town where Saint Arnold started. If all goes according to plan, Warner and company will be brewing by July or August and their beers will be on draft around town two months after that.

“Hopefully, people can take a couple of six-packs of Karbach beer to the Thanksgiving table,” Warner said this morning, while making a test batch of “Weisse Versa” wheat beer that will be among three year-round offerings.

I’ll let Warner introduce himself and Karbach in this short video. Following are a few highlights from my interview.

Last weekend, Warner put his home in the Denver suburb of Aurora up for sale. He, his wife and two high school-age sons are scheduled to meet with a Realtor here this coming weekend. (Aidan, if you’re reading this, I know it stinks to be uprooted for your senior year, but I hear you are pretty talented musically and I predict you will fit right in and grow to love it here as much as we do.)

As a crew from Houston’s Aurora Construction (no relation to the Denver suburb, just a coincidence) smoothed cement floors in the new brewery, Warner said he loves the chaos and excitement of getting a new project off the ground. But he said he sees his Texas adventure as a “medium to longer-term” commitment.

I’m working on a story about Karbach and Warner, but here are a few things you’ll want to know right away:

The beers: Karbach will begin operations with three everyday beers — the Hopadillo IPA made with American, English and German hops; the Weisse Versa pitched with a German Hefe yeast but brewed with coriander and citrus peel in the Belgian Wit style; and an as-yet-unnamed, German-inspired, “assertively hopped” lager.

The German influence is a natural one, as Warner, a German major in college, honed his brewing skills as a young man in Germany.

Bigger brews from Karbach could be on the way later in the year, Warner said. Possibilities include a double IPA or an imperial porter.

“Obviously, we want to get our everyday beers dialed in first,” he said. To that end, he was planning to split his 10-gallon Weisse Versa test batch into two halves, pitching one with a traditional German yeast common in the vast majority of wheat beers and the other with a “super-secret” yeast that he can’t talk about yet.

The team: Warner’s business partners include Chuck Robertson and Ken Goodman of Belukus Marketing Inc., a College Station-based importer. (Robertson explains that, because that company helps facilitate sales to distributors it is classified in the manufacturing, rather than distributing, tier and they can legally own a production brewery. Karbach has a TABC license on record.)

Warner and three others, including former Saint Arnold hand David Graham, will handle day-to-day operations, sales, distribution and marketing.

The packaging: Karbach will be among the growing number of breweries (including, locally, Conroe’s Southern Star) opting for cans instead of bottles. Warner acknowledged that it’s a risk for consumers, but he cited some reasonable sounding reasons: the environmental benefits of lighter, recyclable aluminum; technical advances that keep out oxygen and sunlight better than bottles without the once-familiar metallic taste; and the headache-free process of not having to apply labels to bottles during the production process.

The possibilities in Texas: Warner sees lots of potential in Texas, and especially in the Houston area. That’s where the beer will be available exclusively here at first.

With four 30-barrel and four 60-barrel fermenting tanks, the new brewery will have a production capacity of about 4,000 barrels annually. Since Belukus owns the brewery building, it can expand onsite by moving its importing warehouse elsewhere.